Tag #Glucocorticoid Receptors

How does acute stress affect memory encoding and recall, specifically regarding the differentiation between threatening and non-threatening stimuli?

A University of Toronto study reveals that stress hormones, like corticosterone in mice (analogous to cortisol in humans), increase the size of fear engrams in the amygdala, leading to fear generalization. This means that a fearful response to one stimulus expands to include otherwise neutral stimuli. The study used a threat discrimination task with mice, half of which experienced stress before training, demonstrating this effect.